Hired to fired in 98 days: Lawson's shock early exit from Red Bull in five charts

Red Bull has taken the extraordinary decision to drop Liam Lawson just two rounds after he made his debut for the team.

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No driver has ever returned to Red Bull after being dropped by the team. Lawson will rejoin Red Bull’s second team Racing Bulls, which he drove for last year when it was known as RB.

How does Red Bull’s stunning move compare to past decisions it has made? Was Lawson fully prepared to join a top-flight team? And just how far off team mate Max Verstappen’s pace was he? The charts below offer some context to this astonishing story.

Lawson’s experience compared to other Red Bull drivers

Red Bull has a history of dispensing with drivers quickly when it has lost faith in them or is eager to promote another driver.

Daniil Kvyat lost his seat just four rounds into the 2016 season, having driven for them throughout 2015, as the team hurried to promote Max Verstappen. Three years later, Pierre Gasly lasted just 12 races before Red Bull replaced him with Alexander Albon.

The team has often been quick to promote drivers from its junior team. When this has worked, it has paid dividends. Red Bull’s decisions to hasten Verstappen and Sebastian Vettel into their top team undoubtedly paid off.

But often, it has led them to make rapid changes in drivers. Lawson’s departure today is the most extreme example since the team’s early days.

Lawson’s replacement Yuki Tsunoda joins the team with eight times as many F1 starts as his team mate had at the beginning of the year.

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Lawson’s Red Bull F1 mileage

With only three days of pre-season testing, Lawson had little time to adjust to his car. The same was true of the other five drivers who started their first full seasons this year – Andrea Kimi Antonelli, Oliver Bearman, Jack Doohan, Isack Hadjar and Gabriel Bortoleto.

However life became that bit tougher for Lawson as Red Bull encountered some problems with its new RB21. He covered the least laps of any driver bar Lance Stroll, who sat out part of the final day due to illness.

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Lawson’s deficit in qualifying

Over three qualifying sessions so far this year – including the sprint race qualifying session in Shanghai – Lawson edged slightly closer to Verstappen, though the gap between them remained wide.

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Lawson’s deficit in grands prix

Starting towards the back of the grid inevitably made life tougher for Lawson in the races but he never made the kind of progress which should have been possible in a Red Bull.

For the Chinese Grand Prix Lawson switched to a different set-up in an attempt to get on top of his handling problems in the car. But in the second half of the race he told his race engineer Richard Wood: “I have no balance, absolutely none.”

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Verstappen’s one-lap advantage over those hired to join him

Since Daniel Ricciardo left Red Bull at the end of 2018 the team has struggled to find a driver who can measure up against Verstappen. Lawson’s 0.7-second deficit to Verstappen in Shanghai was more than twice what Perez managed last year.

However, Red Bull’s car was in more competitive shape 12 months ago, and even in his fourth year at the team Perez was often further off Verstappen’s pace than that in the second half of last year. Red Bull’s car appears to be extremely tricky to handle at the moment, and now all eyes are on what Tsunoda can do in it.

Unrepresentative comparisons omitted. Negative value: Verstappen was faster; Positive value: Verstappen’s team mate was faster

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17 comments on “Hired to fired in 98 days: Lawson’s shock early exit from Red Bull in five charts”

Yes (@come-on-kubica)
27th March 2025, 12:00

I hope for one scenario only, Lawson outperforms both red bulls in Japan.
1. BasCB (@bascb)
  27th March 2025, 12:09
  
  It would be wholesome to see Lawson find his mojo (in a more compliant car and on a track he knows well) and give it a decent showing. I think he was thrown into the deep too quickly and now they are doing a knee jerk reaction to their mistake. But in the end if Liam can recover from this, he will be a better driver for it.
2. Yaru (@yaru)
  28th March 2025, 22:33
  
  I hope he continues to fail. I would have felt sorry for him if he didn’t insulted Tsunoda in that interview, saying how Tsunoda’s time was up.
pSynrg (@psynrg)
27th March 2025, 12:37

Absolutely brutal.

RB should be ashamed. It’s as if they have no idea just how exceptional Max really is and writing off several emerging talents in the process.
1. Esploratore (@esploratore1)
  28th March 2025, 17:29
  
  They’re not demanding him to be competitive with verstappen, but they would expect a driver to do the bare minimum you can expect at a good car, and that is being in the points.
JeroenJ
27th March 2025, 12:40

Fired? He hasn’t been fired, he’s ben switched to the other team…
1. David BR (@david-br)
  27th March 2025, 13:00
  
  …the other team with a faster car if you’re not MV.
Jorge Jaime (@jorgejaime)
27th March 2025, 12:48

I hope Yuki keeps the car on the track and doesn’t crash it because of his eager to demonstrate his worth.
Also, Racefans… Don’t you have better colors for your graphs? Dark blue, black and light blue over white? Why not red, black and green
Tomas Temichele
27th March 2025, 13:06

and tsunorda is gonna suck too
MaddSusie (@maddsusie)
27th March 2025, 13:18

I feel in this instance, RBR are doing the best thing for Lawson.

I think they made an error in judgement in putting him straight into the RBR seat too soon.

I hope switching him back down to the more drivable RB’s that he is more comfortable and able to clearly demonstrate his ability and to recover his confidence.
1. Esploratore (@esploratore1)
  28th March 2025, 17:34
  
  The best thing for everyone, short of promoting tsunoda last year ofc, as in red bull has a chance to have a driver who can perform in the red bull and lawson gets back to a team where he performed in the past, unlike perez and albon, who ended up out of f1 when they were fired.
Pedoro T
27th March 2025, 13:35

Lawson’s qualifying performance was too poor.
There was no hope for improvement as the difference from the Q1 passing time was more than 0.5 seconds.

[Q1 Time gap]
AUS Q1
(Lawson vs Verstappen) 1.076
(Lawson vs P15) 0.578

CHN SQ1
(Lawson vs Verstappen) 0.813
(Lawson vs P15) 0.558

CHN Q1
(Lawson vs Verstappen) 0.750
(Lawson vs P15) 0.546
Leo B
27th March 2025, 13:58

Horner is paying the price for not hiring Sainz.
1. RH
  27th March 2025, 19:55
  
  Sainz so far looks like a B tier driver next to Albon. There’s nothing to suggest he’s even beating Albon this year who let’s not forget was manhandled in 2020 by Max.
  1. Esploratore (@esploratore1)
    28th March 2025, 17:36
    
    Very clearly though, albon wasn’t driving the red bull at the same level as he drove the other cars he was in, so a driver who matches albon who suits the red bull might just be a decent number 2.
Sumedh
28th March 2025, 8:34

I don’t understand how Red Bull didn’t find all these problems (qualifying pace, using tyres too much) out during pre-season testing? Have the team become really poor at basic data analyses?

And in case, they are good at data analyses and this was not a problem in Bahrain but manifested directly during race weekends. Then they should have waited until the problem recurred again at Bahrain / other tracks where Lawson has raced in F1 before.

Laughable decisions. Time for Max to jump ship.
1. Yaru (@yaru)
  28th March 2025, 22:37
  
  The problem wasn’t that he sucked but how much he sucked. The car is hard to drive, they know that but he’s had two pit stop starts (where you get to change the setup) and he couldn’t do anything in the race.
  
  Of course promoting him this fast in the first place was also stupid given his inexperience.